Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

Black = Marxist?

The recent word that is saturating the airwaves and the print media is that people who oppose the proposed socialist health care legislation are racist.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2009/08/07/cynthia-tucker-45-65-townhall-protesters-are-racists

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drennen/2009/08/18/msnbc-no-mention-black-gun-owner-among-racist-protesters

So, is what we are being told is that what it means to be “Black” or “Minority” is that one is Marxist? After all if opposing Marxist health care “reform” is equal to being “racist” one can only conclude that to oppose Marx is at the same moment to oppose minorities.

I have often contended that the problem with minority America today is that they have allowed themselves to have their minority status defined by Marxist ideology. Since Marxism is implacably opposed to Christianity the way this works out is that Minorities understand what it means to be a minority in such a way that they stand in opposition to Christianity. The fact that minorities are indeed defined by Marxist ideology can be seen by the super majorities that minorities provide in their vote for Marxist candidates in election cycles.

Now, obviously it would be ridiculous to suggest that a race is automatically identified with a ideology but that is what the main stream media is telling us. Were I a minority I would be outraged by being defined in this way.

For Tom, Michelle & Tommy J. Part V

Dear Tom & Michelle & Tommy J.,

Matthew 6:9-13

9After this manner ought you to pray:

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

10Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

11Give us this day our daily bread.

12And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

13And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

It has been a while since we have considered this. Please forgive me for my tardiness. My problem is one where I have to many interests for my own good and as such my mind (and writing) seems to wander.

Today we take notice the character of the Father that Jesus emphasizes. When Jesus teaches us to pray he teaches us that our desire should be that God would keep His name holy. By placing this desire up front that God would keep His name Hallowed Jesus reminds us that our first and foremost concern would be for the glory and excellence of God to be seen in all the earth. It is well that Jesus should couple the reality of God’s intimate relationship to us as a “Father” while putting in our mouths the Holiness of God. It is true that God is a Father to us, but our intimacy with Him shouldn’t make us forgetful of how exalted God is.

When a Christian prays his first and foremost concern is not for his needs or concerns but rather it first and foremost concern is that God’s name would be seen as hallowed as it never ceases to be. If our passion is that God’s name would not be profaned but hallowed we will escape the destructiveness that always accompanies men who prioritize themselves and their name over Gods. As a Christian Tommy J., our desire is that low views of God would be extinguished from the earth.

We live during a time Tommy J. where very few men have a passion to prioritize God in all their doing and living, including their praying. Jesus teaches us in the Lord’s prayer that before we ask anything for ourselves we are to be mindful that our main passion is for the splendor of God to be seen for what it never ceases to be.

Let us pray

Father, we confess that we are quick to be concerned with the reputation of our names but slow to be concerned about the hallowing of your name. We ask your forgiveness for this sin. Grant us grace to see and understand your glory that we may become a people passionately concerned for its demonstration to the nations that men may come to know the delight and joy of knowing thy Messiah, Jesus.

Now, They Are Threatening Jail Time For Praying

“Students, teachers and local pastors are protesting over a court case involving a northern Florida school principal and an athletic director who are facing criminal charges and up to six months in jail over their offer of a mealtime prayer.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/14/criminal-prayer-case-stirs-protests/?feat=home_headlines

The whole article is quite a window into the view of the state on Christianity.

A few observations,

1.) This article is an argument for getting your children out of pagan schools. When you send your children to government schools the government employees hold the position of “in loco parentis.” This means that the State, when your children are at government schools, are considered the parents of the children and have the rights of parents. In this case the government employees are not acting consistently with what the government parent (the State) desires and so are being prosecuted with the possible consequence of 6 months jail time for saying a prayer.

2.) We must continually keep before us that the opposition to the Christian religion being expressed in the School does not mean that the school is being operated apart from religion. By putatively seeking to sanitize the public square of religion the ACLU is only removing the opposition religions that compete with the religion favored by the ACLU. The religion favored by the ACLU is religious humanism complete with the religious premises of materialism, atheism and relativism. The ACLU is the most successful religious organization operating in America.

3.) We should not want Christian prayer in government schools, if only because the price of such prayer being present in the government schools will be allowing overtly pagan prayers in government schools. (I say overtly because I am fairly confident that “Christian” prayers in government schools would be covertly pagan prayers.) There is little difference between a school system that communicates that all religions are publicly endorsed and the school system that communicates that no religions are publicly endorsed. The end result that is communicated with both approaches is the idea that the State is the god over all gods.

4.) Christians, really must come to understand that the State is viciously opposed to their convictions. Now, some will respond to this by saying, “Well, we have to understand that in order for a school to operate it’s only ‘fair’ that either all the religions get to have expression or none of the religions get to have influence.” We have shown repeatedly that it is impossible to have a school setting where no religion is having any influence, and we have shown repeatedly when all religions have a influence in such a way that some entity is establishing just how much of an influence those religions can have, then the entity establishing just how much of an influence those religions can have is the entity that provides the God and the religion of the school. Remember Rome, where all the gods were allowed as long as all the adherents saw the State as God of the gods.

5.) All religions are totalistic, including the secular humanism of the ACLU. American schools are charged with taking the Christian Steve, the Muslim Muhammed, the Hindu Kartik, and the Jew Levi and turning them into the Secular Humanist Pan. One would think that common ground could be found among the variant religions if only in the idea that each is opposed to having their children wrenched from the god of their fathers in order to serve the god that is the American State.

6.) “He who takes the King’s coin is the King’s man.” Those who will be on trial have taken the King’s coin (their salary working for government schools) and having taken the King’s coin they should not be surprised when the King throws them into jail for not doing the King’s bidding.

7.) The schools have their own religion. That religion is decidedly not Christian. If you send your children to these religious schools you must not be surprised if they end up abandoning the Christian faith to become practitioners of the religion taught by those schools.

Lasch On Schooling & The New Illiteracy

“Faith in the wonder working powers of education has proved to be one of the most durable components of liberal ideology … Yet the democratization of education has accomplished little to justify this faith. It has neither improved popular understanding of modern society, raised the quality of popular culture, nor reduced the gap between wealth and poverty, which remains as wide as ever. On the other hand, it has contributed to the decline of critical thought and the erosion of intellectual standards, forcing us to consider the possibility that mass education, as conservatives have argued all along, is intrinsically incompatible with the maintenance of educational quality….

Universal public education, instead of creating a community of self-governing citizens has contributed to the spread of intellectual torpor and political passivity.”

Christopher Lasch
The Culture Of Narcissism — pg. 125, 130

Mass education has accomplished

1.) The easy spread of noxious childhood diseases.

2.) The creation of a whole new artificial sub-culture commonly referred to as “adolescents.”

3.) The pernicious effect of working in children the desire to be like their peers.

4.) Planned conformity to cultural abnormalities inculcated in school children.

5.) An addiction in our children to the drug of pseudo self esteem.

6.) Providing a place for dime store psychologists to practice their nouveau psychological theories.

7.) A cultural separation between parents and children.

8.) Giving a sense of status to people who have perpetuated what Lasch describes.

9.) A good living for the NEA

10.) A thorough despising for those who actually are educated.

Cooper on Voting

“In those countries where the suffrage is said to be universal, exceptions exist, that arise from the necessity of things, or from that controlling policy which can never safely be lost sight of in the management of human affairs. The interests of women being thought to be so identified with those of their male relatives as to become, in a great degree, inseparable, females are, almost generally, excluded from the possession of political rights. There can be no doubt that society is greatly the gainer, by thus excluding one half its members, and the half that is best adapted to give a tone to domestic happiness, from the stripe of parties and the fierce struggles of political controversies.”

James Fenimore Cooper
American Democratic Leveling

There was a time when men believed that they were protecting their female relatives by not allowing them to get in the dirt and grime of political turmoil. Our change in this regard owes much to the idea that women are just as good at being men as men are at being men. And so women vote just like men. Women candidate just like men. Women get down in the political gutter in order to advance their political careers just like men. What we have given up, if Cooper was correct, is a large share of our domestic happiness.

One result of allowing women to vote has been the tendency of women to vote for parties and candidates that promise to use the government as a mechanism to provide. If you look at women voting patterns you will see that among all women (52% of the population) the Democratic party has enjoyed a typical (though not constant) advantage of 5-8% in presidential elections. It is the natural instinct of a woman to want to be provided for and taken care of and so naturally they tend to, as a whole, vote for statist candidates.

Ironically enough, when the government takes on the role of provider, a situation is created where men are not needed as much in the home to provide. When the government becomes the provider of the family the role of the husband is undercut and his place within the family becomes far more tenuous. Familial coventantal unity is attacked also by the reality that in many homes the votes of husbands and wives in elections cancel each other out. The interests of women are no longer identified with their male relatives.

What woman’s suffrage has introduced is a conflict of interests between men and women.